The first step in getting out of a hole is to stop digging. According to a significant segment of the media as well as many prominent housing prognosticators, we have stopped digging the hole that housing has been sinking into. That may or may not be accurate. It's really a conundrum. From my perspective, the case that we are still digging is stronger than the case for the opposite view.

People do not only need a job in order to purchase a house-they need a job that pays a "living wage." A recent article in The New York Times stated that "while a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying.... Low wage occupations, with median wages of $7.69 to $13.83, accounted for 21 percent of job losses during the retraction. Since employment started expanding, they have accounted for 58 percent of all job growth." This is not only a function of the recession. The economy was already moving in that direction as a result of the combined forces of technology and globalization among other factors. This is the elephant in the room that is not being recognized, and a sustainable solution to this problem has not even been identified. This fact alone will affect the housing market for a long time to come.

If you went to the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, you surely caught the positive attitude in the air. Builders were truly upbeat for the first time in five years! And, if you went to the Builder Partnerships' booth on the exposition floor, you witnessed one of the smartest, best run trade show events I've seen in years. Congratulations to all who made it a success. In addition to the suppliers who manned their information centers efficiently, Builder Partnerships staged a number of educational programs that were as good as or better than the mainstream events. I delivered two programs: "How to Work a Trade Show Booth," and "The Amazing Secrets of Successful Sales People." Need I say the seating area was SRO!

On the "Amazing secrets" topic, I polled several successful sales and selling management leaders about what makes them successful. To add to my secrets list here's a productive postscript.

1. True sales pros know they must share the load building traffic. They develop proven, onsite and offsite outreach programs to enhance their traffic numbers. They track the lead source, quality of the lead by source, propensity to purchase by demographic, conversion to client specificity ratios, and time expended by lead generation opportunity (i.e. where can they find the most sales the fastest).